


i get down on my knees and pretend to pray

by marinersapptcomplex



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Sober Klaus Hargreeves, Vietnam War, its sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 07:56:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marinersapptcomplex/pseuds/marinersapptcomplex
Summary: He was quiet, for once, standing silent and breathing in the air around him. There were tears in his eyes.





	i get down on my knees and pretend to pray

**Author's Note:**

> BASICALLY klaus ignores everyone else and goes to visit dave's grave bc fuck everyone else

 

They gathered around a fire pit in the moments after. Neither said a word in the silence. Klaus tasted blood on the roof of his mouth.

 

“It’s scary,” Dave said, eyes bright with the reflection of orange flames. “The first time you pull the trigger.”

 

Klaus said nothing again, just stared back at the black smoke rising up up up and into the sky. What was once blue was just grey now. He’d never seen so much grey in his life. His hands groped for a carton of cigarettes in his pockets but they only came up trembling and empty.

 

Dave’s hand reached out, soft and yet strangely pervading. “Take mine.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

Klaus lit the crumpled cigarette, taking small and sudden drags as he looked at his feet. The air stunk of burnt flesh and napalm, so he had to bite his tongue to distract himself from the smell. Dave looked to be doing the same.

 

“You must think I’m pathetic,” Klaus said, suddenly, flicking ash from his cigarette. “Compared to you… I look like a fucking scaredy cat.”

 

Dave laughed first, then stopped quite suddenly, and became stony-faced and solemn. The soot and sweat on his face had mixed together to give him a strange, bluish complexion. He looked more like a ghost than any other ghost Klaus had seen in all his years of living with them.

 

“I’m scared.” His voice came like water, flowing cold and smooth over Klaus’ skin. “More scared than you might think.”

 

There was blood browning on the sleeve of his shirt, he didn’t know if it was his blood, or maybe Dave’s, or maybe some other strangers who got caught up in the crossfire. He licked the tip of his thumb, then began scratching it off slowly, watching the bloody stain scale off into the air like little red snowflakes.

 

“I don’t believe that for a single second.” Klaus finally replied, forcing a smile.

 

“Ah, that’s just my good looks covering it up.”

 

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Klaus scoffed, taking another drag and blowing it into Dave’s face.

 

They laughed in the silence again. Klaus reached towards Dave’s front pocket for another cigarette, his fingers shaking hard against the fabric. Dave took hold of his hand, steadied it, then looked into Klaus’ eyes.

 

“You don’t have to be scared, y’know?” Suddenly Dave’s presence seemed to swallow everything terrible in its wake, all the grey disappeared just for a fleetingly, brief moment and Klaus felt real. “We got each other.”

 

Klaus just said, “Yeah.” Then lit his second cigarette with a crooked smile on his mouth.

 

The sun was setting. There was smoke in the sky. It was the end of the world all over again, and yet Klaus was strangely happy to exist within it.

 

\--

 

Klaus drove for hours and hours searching for someone he knew he would never find.

 

“Where are we going?” Ben was riding shotgun, hand sailing against the tide of the breeze from the open window.

 

Klaus said nothing at first, then took a breath, and replied, “To wherever he is.”

 

“He’s not here, Klaus. Not anymore.” Ben had said, but gently.

 

“He is,” Klaus replied, so utterly confident. “He’s somewhere around here, I can feel it.”

 

Although, Klaus wasn’t sure he could feel much of anything these days.

 

In the time before, he had Dave.

 

Dave, who kissed Klaus in the sweetest, most painful way he had ever been kissed. Dave, who was so unbelievably good and gorgeous that he could take away all the horrible, dark parts Klaus had inside.

 

How weird and scary the world was without him. How ugly and open-mouthed he felt breathing in a world alone.

 

\--

 

They were skimming rocks along a muddy puddle in Phu Bai, standing wordless, with their rifles slung all crooked across their backs. Klaus had a pile of empty shells in his hand, throwing them into the water and watching them sink to the bottom like golden, shining koi fish.

 

“Don’t say a whole lot about your old man, do you?” Dave turned, helmet hanging loose over his eyes.

 

Klaus scoffed, readying another bullet case for the puddle. “Is that something I’m supposed to do?”

 

Dave shook his head, “No, I just mean, guys here send letters to their wives, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers. And I heard you talk about your brothers and sisters, but I’ve never heard about any old man from you.”

 

“Well, I suppose there isn’t a whole lot to say.” He sighed, chewing on his thumb. “He was a just a horrible man that had a lot of children and turned them into horrible people.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.” Klaus smiled, throwing another shell into the puddle and watching the water splash up against the sides of their boots. “It’s not your fault.”

 

There was a pause.

 

“You believe in God?”

 

He smoothed his thumb over the bullet for a second, pondering on that question. _If there was a god,_ Klaus thought _, surely he would not have put me through all this pain. Surely not._

 

So he settled on, “No.”

 

“Shame.” Dave's fingers looked cracked and sunburnt in the South Vietnam sun.

 

“Why?”

 

“Way I see it is, your dad can hide from you, but he can’t hide from God.”

 

Klaus paused, head heavy and suddenly red in the glow of the sun. He looked up at the sky, caught glimpse of the ash-leaden clouds and felt a strange on-pouring of light on his face.

 

He was quiet, for once, standing silent and breathing in the air around him. There were tears in his eyes.

 

\--

 

“What was he like then?”

 

“He was as gorgeous as a thunderstorm.”

 

\--

 

Klaus’ finger was bleeding against the trigger of his rifle. He was shaking.

 

There was a body in the mud and Dave’s hand was dragging him back back back until all he could see was black and his mouth tasted of soil.

 

“Hey, Klaus!” Dave's hand was on his cheek. “Klaus!”

 

All Klaus could do was look up at the night sky and think: _Why have you placed me here?_

 

Dave pulled him in against the nape of his neck.

 

“I should be dead already,” Klaus gasped against the fabric of his collar. “I should be dead.”

 

What Klaus did not understand was the way that Dave lay so still and quiet in the bloodshed of war and smoke. What Klaus did not or would not ever understand was the way that the darkness swallowed him whole everytime with no remorse.

 

“But you’re not, Klaus. You hear me?” He pulled him in close. “You’re not dead. You’re alive.”

 

Flashes of machine guns in the distance, glittering and neon, lighting both their faces in the darkness.  

 

“Don’t worry,” Dave had said, smiling and scared. “You’re dreaming, you’re dreaming, and it’ll all be over soon.”

 

Klaus pulled away from Dave’s arms, spotting a soldier, aflame, dropping to his knees in a prayer.

 

_I’m dreaming… I’m dreaming…_

 

_\--_

 

Klaus had pulled over at a gas station to vomit.

 

In the grimy, bathroom mirror his reflection mimicked that of a phantoms. Ben stood behind him, quietly watching, terrified.

 

“You should eat,” Ben said.

 

Klaus had tried being hungry before. He had been hungry enough before to consume everything in his path. And it had still not been enough for him. He was tired of taking. He was tired of giving, too.

 

“No.” He replied simply.

 

“You should sleep, then.”

 

“No,” he breathed, closing his eyes for a moment. “I think I’m fine.”

 

“You’ll die before you get there, you know?”

 

“Get where?”

 

“To him.”

 

“It’ll still be worth it then.” He smiled.

 

In the car, Ben caught glimpses of cigarette burns on Klaus’ legs.

 

\--

 

“You ever think life would just be easier if we weren’t around?”

 

Klaus stayed half-asleep by the campfire, then replied, softly, “I’ve tried living and I’ve tried dying.”

 

“Yeah?” Dave breathed, staring at Klaus’ charcoal eyes through the withering flames of the campfire.

 

“They’re both overrated.”

 

\--

 

Klaus dreamt of forgiveness in the form of his siblings faces.

 

Ben sat at the end of his moth-bitten, motel bed and said, “You don’t have to carry this grief alone. They could help you.”

 

 _How could they ever understand a grief like mine?_ He wanted to say. _They want to take it away and make it their own. They want to destroy whatever the hell they can’t understand._

 

Klaus looked to the end of his bed and waited for Ben to say something.

 

No answer came.

 

\---

 

The first time he touched Dave, (or the first time Dave touched him) they were blackout drunk and dizzy in an alleyway.

 

The world was spinning on its axis and all they could do was laugh and laugh and laugh.

 

He remembered it was like flying and falling at once. He remembered Dave’s fingers were cold against the back of his neck.

 

He was expecting Dave to say, _You’re dreaming… You’re dreaming._

 

But he didn’t.

 

\--

 

He could’ve convinced himself hard enough that Dave was in God’s hands if he wasn’t so shockingly sober.

 

Where was God? Where was he hiding?

 

Klaus lit a cigarette and closed his eyes in the back seat of the car.

 

He had forgotten that Death revealed the emptiness that was there before.

 

\--

 

“Come away with me.” Klaus had said one night.

 

Dave had laughed at first, before replying, “Don’t be stupid.”

 

“I’m not being stupid.”

 

“Alright then, where to?”

 

“Wherever the wind takes us.”

 

“Well, alright then.”

 

And Dave had kissed his cheek so tenderly in the dark, he wished it would stay that perfectly dark for the rest of their lives. Just the two of them. The rest of the world at a cut-off.

 

\--

 

They took to a muddy footpath in a graveyard.

 

\--

There was a field along the footpath they used to walk along where all the summer showers had brought forth frogs. A whole colony of them, eyes wide and black and fascinating.

 

Dave had once sat the both of them down on the hot concrete, cross-legged and drunk on beer, and taught Klaus how to amplify the sound the frogs made by cupping his ears.

 

If Klaus could remember only one thing from Vietnam, it would be the both of them cupping their ears under the stars and laughing.

 

“I’d go to the ends of the world for you.” He’d said, giddy and grinning.

 

And he stuck to that promise, following him all the way to the front line with the stars in his bloodshot eyes.

 

\--

 

Ben and Klaus sat down in the mud. Neither said a word at first. Klaus stared at Dave’s gravestone in the half-light and tried to make sense of the world.

 

“It’s okay to be mad.”

 

Klaus stilled, then turned his head, quietly laughing. “I’m not mad.”

 

“You’re not?”

 

“No,” he whispered. “Just a little tired.”

 

The romance of the world had washed over Klaus as a boy. Unlike his siblings, he didn’t care about the way everybody else looked at him. The way they tried to change their skins, like cherry trees shed their snowy petals, was to him a strange, strange compulsion that he would never understand.

 

Him and Dave were alike in that way, trying to piss the world off in whatever way they could.

 

Klaus let out another choked laugh, wiping his nose, before uttering quietly: “I didn’t think it could get any worse than this.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Oh, stop it.” He rubbed his wet face with his sleeve. “Apologies don’t count unless you’ve got a pulse.”

 

He was expecting something. Dave, in his ratty uniform, grinning gorgeous.

 

“You could bring him back, if you wanted to.”

 

“But I won’t.” Klaus hung his head in his hands and tried to smile with all his teeth. “He died loving me, and I’ll go on loving him ‘til I die.”

 

And at that, neither said another word.

\--

 

Klaus could not write a letter to his father, so he wrote one to Dave instead.

\--

 

Davey:

 

_As life goes on, so do I. Even if I don’t want to. I must keep living, for the both of us._

 

_For years I existed thinking that no love could last for life. But I met you. And I loved you._

 

_For loving me too, I thank you._


End file.
